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Once bitten, twice shy. Its human nature. Perhaps that's called conditioning?
It is a natural response to protect ourselves.
For instance if I dating a guy that said he was going out every Friday night to play ball with the boys and I later find out "the boys" was a stripper named Jolene, then got into another relationship with a guy that also said he was going to play ball with the boys, something would be very wrong if my radar did not go off and I didn't feel defensive, suspicious or uncomfortable. I think our brains are wired to learn from experiences (good and bad) and react accordingly.
I tad off the subject but I've known people who go from one bad realtionship to another because it's easier for them to deal with when things go south.
Location: Everybody is going to hurt you, you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for-B Marley
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Fear. Fear of being hurt again...making the same mistakes again....making a mistake in our next choice...of being misunderstood...rejected....just plain fear.
It's tougher than many realize, the understanding of "baggage". One person already stated (and rightly so) that we are learning programs, and in a way the sum of our experiences.
Another person said that what they now call "baggage" they used to call experience. And that's certainly true.
One of the most difficult aspects of recognizing the difference between baggage and experience is in determining who and what is doing the harm in any given relationship. Relationships are by their very nature fairly complicated things unless the people involved are very much sympatico. Ergo, it can be terribly confusing to try and differentiate between the actual harmful items and effects when a relationship fails and actions which were merely coincidental.
Were you a doormat in the failed relationship, or did he/she take serious, conniving advantage of you?
Are you failing to adequately communicate what you THINK you're communicating, or is she/he really not listening? Is it because they're preoccupied, or do you simply not matter as much as other things?
People recognize that they're HURT, but because we're not omniscient or omnipresent (please, no one point at me and make fat jokes involving omnipresence) it's often very difficult to pinpoint what's causing the harm -- so we make our best guesses, and then the REAL trick...
How situations affect us is often much less about what happened and much more about how we perceived the situation and outcome.
We learn a lesson according to our perception (sometimes very right, and occasionally very wrong) and we behave accordingly.
When that dog bit you, did you:
A) take measures to avoid that dog in the future
B) decide not to ever go down that particular street ever again
C) decide all dogs are likely to bite
D) blame the doggone Liberals who support PETA
None of them are WRONG, but some are more "right" than others. And you behave according to what you've experienced thenceforward. Changing that behaviour requires introspection and the WILL to change, whether a large change or a small.
When that relationship ended and took a bite out of your heart, did you...
...you get the idea.
How to deal with it?
Well, it's a GOOD idea to spend some time looking over one's perceived baggage and deciding what's worth continuing to carry and what needs to be tossed.
The thing to remember is that you're sculpting YOU, not trying to fit someone else's picture.
If you have been for years already then you surely have build up and solved a lot of challenges in your life and going through all of those experiences and forgetting it is really hard.
I had once been hurt by a girlfriend who would always talk about her ex-boyfriend, and ended up breaking up with me to go back with him. My next girlfriend also talked about her ex a lot, so I broke up with her not taking any chances of getting hurt again.
Also, my ex-wife was the one who had past relationship issues. I had to suffer being falsely accused of cheating on her because her ex did so.
Last edited by SEAandATL; 02-20-2012 at 04:39 AM..
Reason: mistype
I've always believed that we tend to carry our baggage from one relationship to the other. Even more so if we were messed over badly from the last person. I know from personal experence I've done this a time or two myself.
You're not a zen with yourself and still have lingering issues which blow up potential future relationships.
I don't mind ppl with a past, but they need to know how to clear out most of their baggage....otherwise they run the risk of being classified as damaged goods to many ppl (not me). However, when I was single I wouldn't have the time or day to deal with someone with a lot of issues, due to the nature of my work. Unless the person was a real big time winner, I'd move on. Life's to short to relive another person's jerry spring episodes.
Because we are nothing more than the sum of all our experiences.
It really takes true detachment to look at a situation and say, "You know, this time is different. I will approach it in an entirely different manner."
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